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News

Spring means more than April showers and May flowers for the nuclear industry. For the members of the Utilities Service Alliance (USA), it means spring refueling outage season.

This spring, six USA members have spring refueling outages with many already underway. Wolf Creek started their refueling outage in February with Monticello and Cook Unit 1 following in March. Just this week, Susquehanna Unit 2 and Salem Unit 1 started their refueling outages. Columbia will begin their refueling outage in May.

“Refueling outages are a great example of USA members working together,” explained Mitch Dior, Outage Excellence Team (OET) core peer team leader. “Equipment and personnel sharing allows members to save money and more importantly benefit from the expertise of veteran employees throughout the fleet.”

The OET has worked hard the past few months to make sure USA members are ready for their spring refueling outages. Based on past operating experience, the team has concentrated on station awareness of protected equipment processes and expectations to ensure decay heat removal systems remain unchallenged throughout the refueling outages this season.

As with all refueling outages, the OET will share lessons learned to improve outage performance moving forward.

Workers unload the reactor core at Cook Unit 1.